Widowed Village

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Changing Seasons on Widowhood Lane

Fall, with all its beauty, has never been one of my favor seasons. Growing up, fall came with an endless supply of leaves that had to be raked each day when I got home from school and when that job was done for the season then we had a dozen old fashioned wooden framed storm windows to wash and exchange for the screens hanging on the house. Those thankless chores didn’t exit from my life until I was almost old enough for Medicare. In fact, raking leaves and dealing with storm windows in the fall expanded to include several more houses as Don’s and my aging parents needed help in the fall. Heck, with his soft spot for old widows Don even got us involved with helping several elderly neighbors with their leaves which I didn’t like doing at the time. Spending so many daylight hours of October raking, burning or hauling leaves wore me right out. In life, everything comes full circle. Now I’m the that elderly woman on the block and I’m grateful for the “Don” who lives next door and snow blows my sidewalk. He’s exhibit B in the changing seasons of my life.
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The Canadian geese have been flying overhead this week. Bright colors are in the landscape and the days are getting shorter. The cooler temperatures of fall are here and even though I don’t have much to do to get ready for winter, the changing season is making me anxious and sad and missing Don all the more. Maybe it’s remembering autumns past---the work we did getting all his equipment ready for the winter snow removal season. Or maybe it’s the symbolism of leaving summer behind that makes it seem like Don is slipping farther away with each new sign from Mother Nature that life goes on, things change. For every thing there is a season...and Don’s season is truly gone.

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And with fall comes the beginning of the holiday season---the first Halloween, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas and the first New Years in forty-two years that I’ll be all alone in the world. It’s a huge Waterloo that we widows have to fight our way through and we equate it with being at the wrong end of Napoleon’s bloody cannon. Cripe! Get out the violins. Grab the hankies. I’m getting overly dramatic again. Woe is me. A pity party is about to start. Broken hearts, lonely nights, and lost loves…yadda, yadda, yadda. I’d write myself a country western song if I had any musical talent. But since I don’t I’ll try my hand at writing a sappy poem instead, try summing up in 50 words or less what it's taken me three paragraphs to say up above:
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The rustling leaves of seasons past
Seems to say he won’t be near
For the coming holidays so blue.
He’s riding the winds of yesterday
Caught on the breath of Lady Fall
As she makes hearts as bleak as the
Landscape she hands over to Snow.
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So now you have my poem and weekly report penned here on Widowhood Lane where I’m left searching for rhymes. (Hey, anything that takes my mind off from chocolate brownies is a good thing.) And I won’t be able to stop until I admit out loud that it was all a waste of time; i.e. it takes more than a lonely old heart to make one into a poet. And deep down, I know it. ©
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My other blog is here.

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Tags: changing, fall, loneliness, seasons

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Comment by jean on October 15, 2012 at 3:34pm

Love this Blue.. thank you for sharing. Love the Poem too! That says something as I'm not big on poems. ;)

Fall is hard for me too.. the yadda yadda yadda sounds a bit like me. I hate, HATE feeling sorry for myself. Brings me no peace.. brings me no health. But the gut punch happens and I must muddle through, counting my blessings all the while in order to shake off the blues and find that smile again. (((hugs))) Again.. thanks for sharing.

~jean

Comment by Dianne in Nevada on October 14, 2012 at 12:30pm

I always enjoy your posts, Blue. A lovely poem as the seasons change and the holidays approach. Those 'firsts' can be daunting but you will find a way to get through them ... to survive them. And as time passes by it helps us to be able to embrace those wonderful memories without the same degree of sadness and pain - and that's a good thing, I think. I hit those 'firsts' in 2010 after my husband of 41 years died at the end of September. I ran away that first year; tried to put up the tree last year but it sat there bare until I took it down. This year I think I may just be able to bring out that box of memories and place them on the tree.

Comment by hendrixx2 on October 14, 2012 at 6:43am

Hi Snow,

Thank you for the report from Widowed Lane...yes the seasons is changing and as we all are I suspect; and tho it does sometime appear DJ is slipping further away, I am trying to convince myself that it is only an illusion, and that only the newness and uncertainty of the new situation has me feeling that way...Peace

Comment by bj628(Bonnie) on October 13, 2012 at 5:48pm

((((((((((((Blue Snow))))))))))) a lovely poem.  I am not looking forward to the dark nights, getting shorter all the time.  Do still have a few things to finish before Winter comes, but minor things..

 Remembering your blogs .. from another site.. and Don singing "songs" as you drove.. The love you shared those many years will be with you always! You have helped so many with sharing your life and love. You don't have any idea what an inspiration you have been to so Many. 

Comment by recent loss(Ron) on October 13, 2012 at 5:02pm

Blue snow that was a touching story, and a wonderful poem ,keep on going and coming here we will make it together

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